KAMPALA (AFP) - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced a unilateral one-week halt in military operations against northern rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army, one of Africa's most brutal and forgotten conflicts.
"Museveni has ordered a seven-day suspension of UPDF (Uganda People's Defence Forces) operations in a limited area of Acholi to allow the leadership of (LRA leader Joseph) Kony's group to meet and confirm they accept his offer to come out of the bush," Museveni's press secretary Onapito Ekomoloit said in a statement.
The truce, which gives the insurgents more time to make a decision on starting peace talks with Kampala, will commence on Monday at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT), Ekomoloit added.
Kitgum, Gulu and Pader districts, in Acholi region, have all been ravaged by conflict.
Museveni offered in August 2002 an option of peace talks with the LRA rebels, who took up arms in northern Uganda in 1988 with the aim of overthrowing the government and replacing it with one based on the Biblical Ten Commandments.
In return, the same year, the LRA offered a temporary ceasefire, but talks failed to materialise.
"What the president has announced is a breathing space for rebels to consult on his offer because they have indicated that they have not had time to consult," Ekomoloit told AFP by phone.
He added that in the last three weeks the former minister in charge of northern Uganda, Betty Bigombe "has had clear indications from Kony's group that they want to end the conflict."
"They are under intense pressure from UPDF. A Kony spokesman has said that they want to talk peace," the statement said.
Bigombe currently works with the United Nations in New York, but has been preferred by both sides as the leading mediator.
"Bigombe has, therefore, proposed a seven-day suspension to allow the leadership to meet," the press secretary added.
The next step is for the LRA to prepare a statement indicating that they have accepted Museveni's peace gesture, after which the Ugandan government will declare a further 10-day truce in the same areas.
"However, the UPDF will continue operations against the remnants of Kony's group in all the other areas of northern Uganda and Southern Sudan until the government gets an irreversible commitment indicating their intention to end violence vis-a-vis the population and end, once and for all time, the terror campaign," the press secretary said.
In 1994 Bigombe presided over a peace process between Kampala and the LRA, which collapsed after Museveni called on the insurgents to surrender or "face might of army."
Since then the war has raged on, with several false starts in the search to revitalise peace talks.
The LRA is notorious for its brutality against the civilian population.
Some 1.6 million people caught up in the conflict have fled their homes and are currently living in squalid camps dotting the region.
LRA fighters are notorious for abducting children: boys to serve as new recruits to rebel ranks and girls to be sex slaves to rebel commanders.
Several relief agencies estimate that up to 20,000 children have been abducted so far, many of them still unaccounted for.
11/14/2004 - 17:48 GMT - AFP